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I saw some CJ publishers poping up the CJ advertiser when a page is load instead of letting the visitor to click when they want to. Is this against CJ terms of use? For me, they have nothing different than 'adsware'.

I have noticed this alot lately with some coupon/deal sites. When you click on a link on their site to see all the deals for a certain store, they have the store load in a different browser window in the backround. And it is not just with CJ merchants, but with all merchants they have on their site.
I imagine it is their way of making sure their cookie gets set whether the visitor clicks on their affiliate link or not.
I am interested in other's opinions on this. The only thing I can think of is that it is unfair to other affiliate's who's cookie may be on the visitors computer due to a real click thru, and the other site is just automatically overwriting the cookie even though no one clicked on their link.

popping up an ad and forcing a click when doing so is definitely against the CJ service agreement.
doing this creates "fake" clicks and screws up EPC's tremendously.

there are ways for an Advertiser to provide special pop-up/pop-under links to Publishers, so that when the Publisher pops-up/under the ad, a click doesn't occur, and would only occur when the content was then clicked.

the CJ Network Quality deparment looks for this type of activity, and will deactivate the Publishers account if found.

ALL "incent" based affiliates have to resort to every sneaky tactic in the book. Since the BHO "incent" perps have hijacked their ebiz plan look for more sleezy cookie setting tricks and spamming from the "incent" crowd of affiliates. Then again it is just my viewpoint as I've watched all the ills of affiliate marketing point to "incent" affiliates since 1997.

Charlie ...

If they won't adopt and feed a bird ..flip them one! BBQ some Gator and remember to flush WhenU..

I checked out several coupon sites. Quite a few of them seem to be stuffing the poor merchant site in a frame.

Since Shawn of Overstock.com declared these types of misdirects to be a legitimate advertising technique, I suspect that the problem will get a great deal worse in the months to come. Gosh, you could put one merchant in frame and one in popup. That's two cookie sets!

Why not do a side by side comparison of merchants in frames? You could load two merchants in frames and one in a popup....three cookie sets! Why not put up three popups with merchants and two merchants in frames. Damn, that would be 5 cookie set by a single user action. Why not just make a program that opens a hidden frame and loop through a list of merchants. You could probably get a 100 cookies set. If the person has DSL, they may not even notice. They would hear the hard disk cranking, and their browser might crash mid stream...but, hey, this is affiliate marketing at its finest.

Hopefully the CJ merchants will dump these losers since they drop the merchant's EPC to zero.

BTW, when CJ finds a publisher pulling stupid stunts like this, do they inform all of the merchants, or do they leave it to each merchant to sniff out the problems and flush their own toilets?

In these two cases, the text links are the companies domain name... so it's not like the clicks are entirely deceiving.

... although, they are pop-unders which occur under the resulting Publisher page from the click.
So, the actual Advertisers site is pretty much hidden, and the user wouldn't intially know they were sent to the Advertisers system.

In cases like these, where the "forced clicks" aren't blatenely obvious, it would be up to the Advertisers discretion to determine whether this type of linking was appropriate or not.

The Network Quality department will immediately get rid of any Publishers blatenely forcing clicks via pop-up/unders, which is about as much as they can do.
If they do run into a case like the URL's you provided, they often contact the Advertiser and make them aware just as an FYI.

Lots of coupon sites hace coupon pages for merchants that have never had coupons, so users see that the are no coupons availabel, but who cares, cookie was set and commission is taken.
USer was searching for store name originaly, so Merchant paid a commission for.. nothing.

Yep, you are correct about DealCatcher. If you click on any of the merchant logo banners, it takes you to the page listing all the merchants deals on DealCatcher and also loads the store in the background, this setting the cookie, and making a "click" where there is really no click.
If this is something that is allowed, merchant stats will really be getting thrown off. And affiliate cookies will be overwritten whether a person clicked on another affiliate's links or not.

It is sad that we even have to try to police other affiliates, and fight the unfairness of other affiliates.
I guess the solution is that everything is fair game. No more playing by the rules. Time to stop playing nice and compete with them at their own game.
Guess you can't make it in affiliate marketing by being honest and hardworking.
People don't care about others, they just want all the money for themselves any way they can get it.
You can find a lot of strange things going on out here in affiliate land. Just go to http://dealzconnection.com/ and start checking out sites. Pay attention to the things going on on those sites. You will be amazed.
It is not necessarily the parasites we should be worrying about, the affiliates are doing enough damage to each other.

Seems we should be spending more time informing and teaching affiliates instead of the merchants so much about the parasites. Although some of their behaviors are bordering on parasitic.
What good are return days if other affiliates are overwriting our cookies even though no one clicked on their links?

I guess we can all start posting unauthorized staples promotions also, since they don't do anything to the sites that publish them.

Connie, I agree, its hard to try to keep it honest when you see this stuff going on.. Its easy to pop a window on those "store description" pages. I can have that set up side wide in less than 5 minutes.. I guess I'll have to look into that..

The only good thing is if someone clicks through my link last, I get the cookie.

Do you plan on doing similar things on your site, like you said, it looks like we must in order to compete.

Have you seen anything else sleezy besides the iframe and the pop behinds?

I thought Ebates was dead, but then I saw their 'face' in the successful publisher at cj.com main page!

The pop-up/under is more frustrating when someone just click on a link from a search engine results and the advertiser is pop-up.

Some even display nothing but just redirect their page to the advertiser. They create 2 version for the same pages, 1 that shows to the search engine robots so it won't redirect while another will redirect.

I rest my case after browsing through the dead pool and the hundreds of coupon/incent affiliates at the above link. Even more interesting are there methods to overwrite all popular merchants who do convert even if they don't have any current incent offerings. Loyality shopping my butt ...as their sites for the most part are just tricks for click or cookie setting endeavors. Finding the legit incent marketers like Connie are the exception ..not the rule. Anyone ever get some spamm from these fine folks lying through their teeth about some non existant Freebee -coupon or rebate offer to some well know merchant.

When I read here at ABW the affiliates begging to more coupons or AM's who cater to both the big "incent" thieves with BHO's and the small fry with their cookie con-games it sickens me. Do any of you have any idea how many cookies get overwritten every day that destroy the conversion ratio of real pre-sell affiliates.

Then you have the "incent" Dupers (posing as merchants) that litter F'dcompany.com and the dead pools of the major networks over the last 5 years. I'd thank God for the day the networks pull the plug on the "incent" autofeeds and all the shady side of affiliate marketing will magically disappear.

Charlie ...

If they won't adopt and feed a bird ..flip them one! BBQ some Gator and remember to flush WhenU..

Sometimes I play a reverse game on this issue. With big volumes, and the reverse strategy of limiting very well the clicks to very interested people who click only after being quite sure they would buy, I outperform Network EPC, reaching 10 times the average and pushing the average EPC up, better commission structures for me are usually accepted by merchants.

This thread is one of the main reasons that I felt bad about losing the ethics debate.

If you accept that there are ethics, then it is possible to define best practices. Once you have a good set of defined best practices, you can go after those outside best practices, by pointing out that they are outside best practices.

The truth is that web users know that they can sometimes get a discount at Merchant X if they search in Google for "Merchant X Coupon."

It is easy to get in the top google rank for the "Merchant X Coupon" search when a merchant X doesn't offer coupons (that's cause those stupid honest coupons sites don't make pages for non-coupon shops). A simple link in an invisible iFrame, and you've duped the web browser into setting a cookie. Since these people are probably pre sold by another site, they are likely to get a good EPC.

It doesn't even really involve lying...just deceit.

You can get the top google spot for "Merchant X Coupon" by making a page that says in several ways.

Merchant x has no coupons.
There are no coupons at Merchant x.
Merchant x coupons don't exist.
Merchant x coupons are non-existant.
Merchant x is a coupon free site.
Free coupons are not at Merchant X!
All your Merchant X coupons are belong to us.

1x1 iframe to load cookie...suckers!!!!

BTW, be sure to get your coupons site on the ABW exclusion list. Otherwise eBates might steal your plunder.

Yintercept you and I agree on all the pertinent issues. Some of the posters and most of the lurkers at ABW are just BS commission con artists who are seeking ways to fudge the system. If the darn networks wanted to eliminate the fraudsters they's take turd infested INCENT swimming hole and bann all forms of reward advertising. The legit loyality shoppers you can count on your fingers. Even the ClubMom type sites are now having to go to the darkside to compete in the reward/points/coupon marketplace.

As you can see from my challenge test to showcase some lame Overstock coupons not one sale will result from using coupons as an enticement, unless I sell out and use sleeze bag cookie swapping games and spamm the PPCSE's with bogus reward listings.

No since in wasting the web ink in identifying the "incent" sleezebag affiliate sites, we should just post those who are legit after we get to view their techniques. I know of NO incent DUPER merchant who is legit. I know of only 2 real "incent" affiliates who offer any real value to their shoppers and merchants. All the others are schemers and wannabee B-a-HO's.

We all know Connie is getting sick and tired of sleeze bag competition and one only has to do a whois lookup of the "incent" sites to see who has no morals -no ethics -no liability from false click trickery or cookie swapping traps they call web sites. Any merchant AM who spends the majority of their time working with incent sites and pushing incented advertising crapolla are just too lazy to work on their bosses ROI. They are content to screw normal affiliates and could care less about raping their bosses bank account as long as they get their bonuses.

Charlie ...

If they won't adopt and feed a bird ..flip them one! BBQ some Gator and remember to flush WhenU..